The Broken Promise

In my previous video post, I talked to you a little about the alarm monitoring industry’s first dirty little secret. The dirty little secret that is raking in massive profits with overpriced monitoring plans.

Now I’ll reveal to you the second dirty little secret. This one may completely surprise you.

Now, as we covered in the first dirty little secret of the alarm industry, monitoring keeps getting more and more expensive and alarm systems get cheaper and cheaper. But what are we really buying when we’re buying alarm monitoring.

We’re buying the promise that someone will be responding to the alarm triggering and take care of the bad guys.

Well, as I’ve said in the last episode, the burglars are gone as soon as the noise starts. They’re not staying around. They don’t know if it’s monitored or if it’s not monitored. They don’t know if the police are two minutes away or a neighbor is going to catch them in the act.

It’s just not in their best interest to stay a moment longer. There’s no upside for them to remain around.

But with the big alarm companies like ADT and Monitronics and Protection One and Stanley Security, they increasingly do this fear based advertising. Particularly from the ADT ads, you’d be lead to believe that there’s a policeman sitting on your corner just waiting for your alarm to go.

They are selling fear to make you monitor the alarm and rightfully expect prompt police response when the alarm is tripped. Well, the dirty little secret is that police are not responding. They may take as much as five hours to respond, or not at all, making the alarm monitoring company’s promise rather empty.

I’ve talked about the increasing problem with false alarm fines before. Not only are they not responding, but you may find yourself being fined by your city or charged a user fee. Talk about an empty promise. This one is increasingly turning around to bite you.

Homeowners with alarms being monitored by these companies which are automatically reported to the police are getting less and less from the police departments.

Some private communities have private guards. If you have a small community, that can be effective in making sure things are closed up and responded to. Count yourself lucky.

Basically, the industry’s dirty little secret is that there is no response. There is good response for fire alarms, panic alarms, medical alarms, and flood detectors. Those types of devices don’t have the common false alarms or malfunction issues that home security systems do. Particularly so because people don’t interact with them. They are also serious hazards.

Where does that leave your home when it is broken into? What happens when the burglar leaves doors wide open, windows shattered, or worse? If no one responds, it takes hours in a rainstorm, or leaves your home wide open for other people or animals to waltz right in, that is a real problem.

What if instead of a central monitoring station somewhere and outrageous fees, your had your neighbors, friends, family – the people you know and trust – checking up as soon as an alarm is triggered?

If they saw something happening in your home, they could call the police as an eyewitness instead of a probable false alarm. That would create a priority for the police, and those same people you know and trust will be there taking care of your home for you when you can’t get there.

That is just what we do for each other when we know each other and are nearby, ready to respond.

That is why the industry is ready to be flipped on it’s head. We even created our own solution to address the problem. Blockwatch Alarm monitoring monitors nearly any home security system and instantly notifies you and the people you choose while stripping out the cost and price gouging. We get back to the people you know and trust watching your back.

The alarm monitoring industry continues to take advantage of homeowners who don’t know any better. Now you know their dirty little secrets, and how to change things.

Have you experienced these very situations yourself? Are you trapped in an overpriced contract you can’t get out of? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below!

Looking to get out of your alarm monitoring contract, check out our article walking you through what to look for in your contract and how to cancel it.